Why is Enterprise Architecture sitting out the DIGITAL party?

Jason Bloomberg's post Invite Enterprise Architecture to the Digital Party makes an interesting read. His essential premise is that Enterprise Architects in most organizations are missing the bus as far as staying engaged with; and relevant to digital initiatives is concerned.

This is a shame since "DIGITAL transformation" is the biggest challenge faced by CIOs and "Go Digital" is their biggest mandate per IT stakeholders.

His solution includes what I will describe in marketing jargon as "re-branding" and "re-positioning" Enterprise Architecture as a Center of Digital Excellence.

Hold on to that thought and let's come back to the Digital Party for a second. More specifically - the Party and getting invited to it.

WikiHow lists 3 ways of getting invited to a party which you want to be at and haven't got an invitation to:

1. Use Your Connections
2. Provide Your Service
3. Donate Something Useful

Looks like EA has its work cut out in case it wants to join the party.

The first way sounds easy but as Jason points out "On the surface, EA and digital sound like a match made in heaven..........Only most organizations don’t see this connection – for a number of possible reasons." So looks like the connections if any are tenuous at best and are more often than not perceived as a drag by other players.

The second way has its own challenge as "today’s EA efforts rarely focus on business agility." Digital initiatives view EA's service offerings as being slow and not in tunes with their own pace.

And for the third way the most likely question is going to be "What?". What can EA bring to the party esp. if the "existing EA effort may not be focused on broad-based business improvement at all......focus ends up on technology concerns".

So is all hope lost? Can EA ever be relevant in an era of Digital Transformation? Well , Yes if it gets its act together and adapts to the rules of the new party. The buzzwords at this party are:

• Agile......"Business Agility"
• Business Aligned
• Customer Preferences and Behavior Driven

So much for the ABC's , there will be some dotting of the i's and crossing of the t's required as well.

Ciao! for now....I'll revisit the "Re-branding" and "Re-positioning" in another post. Hold on to those words for now. (Enterprise Architecture is Dead, Long Live Enterprise Transformation!)